Web3 isn't necessarily about greater functionality. But given the choice, society should gravitate towards web3 built solutions

I understand that people, especially people that have been around tech for a long time, are tired of the hype around the crypto world (I am too). It seems that every time we open up a social media platform someone is trying to shove an NFT launch down our throat, looking to get rich as quickly as possible. My team and I are working on a lot of blockchain projects and a few months back we had a meeting with a team of “launch experts” that had a pretty simple equation for a token or NFT launch: If you have $500.000 for marketing your launch will make you millions. This upset me. I truly believe in the potential of blockchain technology and a web3 world. I'll keep working with my team on great Blockchain projects, projects that leverage Blockchain technology for great use cases (https://yhoo.it/3J0A6GB) while we look to help communities understand all that web3 has to offer them.

My name is David and I’m co-founder of Ultrix Labs (https://ultrix.digital) and Baja Technologies, INC. So many things are being said around the blockchain space that I just wanted to take a few minutes to give you my two cents.

The truth (at least my truth) is that most of the people that are in the blockchain space now are investing, farming, staking, and so on, looking for the highest possible returns, nothing more. I have a background in Economics so naturally, I was wary of this concept (while juggling the other part of me that does not want to miss out on Bitcoin at $500.000, lol). For anyone that has a background in Economics or Finance, an asset that depends (seemingly) only on supply and demand and nothing more is something to be cautious about, but I finally made peace with the idea that Bitcoin is digital gold. Fine.

This same train of thought is the one that makes me bullish on tokens that back platforms like Solana, Hedera, Stellar, and a few others. The idea that these tokens are not as high in value as I think they should be, makes me more certain of my theory. Crypto investors, in general, are not yet sophisticated enough to look for tokens that back blockchain protocols that can create real value, real-world solutions, and solve a lot of real-world problems, most don’t seem to care, they don’t think like traditional investors.

We all know that Bitcoin and Ethereum (layer 1) are not very fast, they are not cost-effective and are very inefficient. But while most of the focus is on these blockchains, people working in the blockchain space know that other protocols are offering thousands of transactions-per-second at extremely low costs and that these are the blockchains that we will leverage to build a truly scalable web3 world.

So why web3? Most real-world use cases can be solved with Web2, outside of tokens and NFTs, web3 does not seem to provide so many more functionalities than web2 (if any). This leads people in the tech space to think that others will build web3 solutions that could be built in web2 simply for the hype. We need to get away from this concept to better understand why, while we can build similar solutions in web2, we might want to look to do it in a decentralized way.

When I look at what organizations like Fireblocks and blockchains like Ripple could bring to the financial world I know it HAS to be the future of Banking. Instant transactions, negligible costs, to anyone in the world, why would we choose the web2 alternative?

Ok, fine, finance is a no-brainer, so are enterprise solutions (logistics, documentation, ownership, notarizations, security, and so on).

What about the average American family, why should they care if something is built on web3 rather than web2?

The reality is that up to now most people don’t really care to understand how we build technology, they just care that it works as intended, that it’s safe, etc. With web3 we constantly talk about ownership, taking into account the same solution built on web2 and web3, communities should start to gravitate towards solutions where they have a voice and a fair distribution of assets.

A simple example would be ads. Companies need to run ads to their target public and generally pay companies for the space, time, and platform to reach their audience. In a web3 version of this members could decide how to distribute Ad earnings, so basically, companies would have to pay people directly if they wanted to show them an ad, in an automatic way, directly to a wallet. Wouldn’t we all prefer a model like this?

Wouldn’t communities (once they understand that web3 is much more than digital art NFTs) want organizations that are built to be transparent and fair? Given a choice wouldn’t we all want a share of what we produce online? (proportionate to the value we create, of course) some might make a penny, some a million bucks. But the rules would always be clear and we wouldn’t depend on some giant corporation to make the rules as they see fit and for their benefit first.

Web3 is an incredible concept, even politically, because it appeals to the libertarians but also to those that want a more equitable distribution of assets. I think that now, more than ever, blockchain could help solve a lot of the issues around politics too (that’s a whole other post).

My challenge for you

Of course, there is not a web3 future alternative for everything but I want you to think about your industry and the solutions that are currently available, web3 would probably not bring a lot of extra functionalities in an immediate way if you were to build most of the software in your industry on a blockchain. But would a web3 solution be welcomed by consumers? Would they want to earn for contributing? Would they want a vote as to where the industry is headed?

Our role

As creators we need to look beyond the hype, because we’ll still be here after it’s worn off, building great, useful things with this tech. We need to understand how we can create value for our communities in a way that is more beneficial than it has been ‘till now. Don’t get me wrong, web2 has moved at light-speed, and has given people that otherwise would have had it much tougher a chance to do great things, but as we look to continue evolving, we need to understand why we might want to head into this direction.

Finance, charities, social media, enterprise, entertainment, sports, government; There are use cases for all of these and many more, that if given the chance, and with a full understanding of web3, people would choose web3 over web2 any day of the week.

Let’s build great, useful ish for the future with web3, that’s what it's really about. F the hype.